A 9-to-5 workday can either be a joyful experience or a joyless exercise in daily drudgery. The same can also be said of the drive to and from work, especially when you’re required to take your co-workers along for each ride every day – whether you love them or loathe them.
Although it can frequently feel awkward to share a car with your fellow desk jockeys as you travel to your designated place of employment, the hectic commute can also be a comedic yet incredibly relatable one when you watch all ten episodes of the new comedy web series Carpool, available on YouTube (link below).
Created and produced by Elana Pisani, Carpool’s short yet silly check-ins with an eclectic quartet of working stiffs – the upbeat yet unsophisticated customer relations representative Mia (Natali Nichols), alluring practical joker/rabble rouser Aiden (Manuel Esparza), overly high-minded yet dissatisfied operations manager Kate (Diana Restrepo) and imaginative yet spiritually grounded Jonah (Luis Bell) – capture the frenzy of being stuck in a cramped car with four quirky personalities and the instant humor that results from their back-and-forth banter.
L-R: CARPOOL co-stars Diana Restrepo (as Kate) and Manuel Esparza (as Aiden).
Witty and observational, Carpool is also grounded in authenticity thanks to the series’ idiosyncratic characters and the uncomfortable moments they’re forced to share together despite the obvious convenience of their not having to take separate vehicles to work. In her years spent on the 9-to-5 grind, Pisani saw her fair share of both, thus helping to make the fictional world of Carpool highly recognizable to audiences.
“I was inspired (to create Carpool) by my own commute and (my) work at office jobs,” Pisani says. “You meet different types of people that you get close to like a family, but you can also get on each other’s nerves in tight quarters.”
Even though all four of the show’s protagonists share some of the same traits as Pisani’s past and present co-workers, they each have qualities that often make their behavior wackier than her real life counterparts. “They’re based loosely on people I’ve known, and then heavily exaggerated,” adds Pisani. “Kate (Restrepo) is actually based on me, but I promise I’m not as surly.”
While Pisani didn’t have to cast a wide net to find the four talented actors who comprised Carpool’s ensemble (they’ve long been friends with the filmmaker), having to shoot their scenes inside a less than spacious automobile was more of a bumpy ride for Restrepo, Bell, Esparza and Nichols as production started in early 2020 – not long before the COVID-19 pandemic devastated America and the world overall. (Filming of Carpool wrapped in February 2020.)
Through extensive pre-shoot preparations by Pisani and her cast, plus on-the-fly adjustments to each of the attached in-car cameras, every episode of Carpool looked and sounded incredibly flawless. “We did a lot of rehearsing beforehand so that when the actors would film, it would be second nature,” Pisani remembers. “I thought that hiding in the trunk of the car would be a bad idea, so instead I would watch takes on my phone afterward and give notes before moving on.”
L-R: CARPOOL co-stars Natali Nichols (as Mia) and Luis Bell (as Jonah).
With co-stars Bell (Jonah) and Nichols (Mia) also joining Pisani in Carpool’s writers’ room, their talents in developing comedy on the page superbly illuminate their performances on-camera. “Both Luis and Natali are amazing and funny, and they bring that to the table with both their writing and acting,” raves Pisani. “Luis is very charismatic and excels at joke writing and improv. Natali is incredible at diving into character and has wonderful comedic timing.”
Since premiering on YouTube in 2020, Carpool has been honored with that year’s British Web Awards’ “Best Concept In A Sketch Comedy” prize, and has been shown virtually at various other web series festivals. The praise Carpool has received from industry pros and audiences has only added to the show’s success, which is shared equally by her cast and crew. “I’ve been excited by the response so far,” Pisani notes. “I think people identify with a lot of what goes on and the characters’ reactions to each other.”
With the painful struggle that was 2020 now in the rear view mirror, and with life cautiously creeping back to some sense of pre-COVID normalcy in 2021, Pisani feels that Carpool’s episodic brevity, sitcom-like humor and comically contrasting protagonists help make the series appealing even to those who aren’t stuck behind a desk five days a week. “I just hope that viewers are entertained,” she says. “…I hope that for anyone watching, it brightens their day just a bit.”
YOUTUBE: http://youtube.com/carpooltheseries
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/carpooltheseries
TWITTER: @CarpoolSeries
INSTAGRAM: @CarpoolTheSeries
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